


the day after the funeral (you're still alive)

by Hecate



Category: Harper's Island
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They survived. That was the easy part. (Post!Show, AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the day after the funeral (you're still alive)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made. Based on fictional characters.

The first time he wakes, the world is made of light and sound and nothing at all. Somewhere, a voice. Words, strangely familiar.

He listens, understands nothing. Sees a memory in green and brown for a few seconds, a flash of a forest in front of his eyes. Tastes copper and remembers blood.

Reaches out to touch the world, to hold on to it.

And falls away again.

***

The second time, the world has gone white, light blues somewhere, and he blinks. Wonders where all the red has gone.

Something at his side beeps. A machine, some part of his brain tells him, slow to wake up. Hospital, it goes on.

"Sully?" someone asks. It's his name. He remembers that. And he knows that voice.

Chloe.

He tries to say her name and fails, mouth full of cotton, desert dry, and she silences him with a finger against his lips.

"Don't speak."

He nods, slowly. Carefully. He thinks his head might fall off if he moves too fast, thinks he might fall apart himself, pieces of memories and bones. He wonders why he's there. He doesn't remember. He thinks he should.

"You're in hospital," she tells him. "But you're going to be okay."

Her words sound like a lie; they sound impossible. He wants to ask but can't, too tired to do anything but stay still.

"I'll go get your doctor," Chloe says into the silence. Her shoes click on the floor as she walks away. When she's gone, he sinks again.

***

He dreams of Trish. She's wearing white.

***

When he wakes up for the third time, reality has found him.

Chloe is there, her skin a puzzle of black and blues, her face frighteningly tired. But Abby told him Chloe was dead. Abby told him that she fell.

Abby, and the forest, and running, and people hanging from a tree.

"Henry," he says. Remembers. Betrayal and pain, a knife in his body.

Chloe nods. "I know." A pause, a grimace. "Abby killed him."

"Good," he answers. Thinks, _He was my friend_ , and doesn't care.

"Yeah."

***

"The river saved us," Chloe tells him days later. "Cal and me, we both fell into the river. That was enough." She shrugs. "I woke up here. Bruised all over, some cuts. Two broken ribs. But I woke up."

"Cal hasn't yet," he asks, says. Chloe nods.

"He will," she answers.

Sully closes his eyes. "He will," he repeats for her.

***

They tell him that he's healing, that he will be fine.

He has trouble believing them. He pretends anyway. It's easier that way.

Chloe comes by every day, a ghost wandering the halls. She holds his hand sometimes; he wraps his around her wrist. Her pulse is a storm under his touch, too fast, the sound of somebody running.

He wants to hold on to her and can't.

***

Abby visits a week after he woke up, silent for long minutes, a sitting statue at his bed. When she speaks, her voice sounds incredibly tired.

"I'm sorry," she says, and it takes Sully a while to understand.

"It's not your fault," he tells her, winces when she laughs. It's a bitter sound, too bitter for the girl he used to know. He wants her to stop. He wants everything to stop, just for a moment, so that he can breathe.

"Abby..."

"It is my fault. It has to be. If it isn't, they all died for nothing, and that..." She gasps, a choked up sound, and looks away from him. "It's my fault."

"Okay," he says and takes her hand.

***

"You can stay at my place," Chloe offers after his doctors tell him he will be released soon. He nods and doesn't tell her that his mother cried when she visited him, that his father had stared at the wall with a face so hard that Sully could see all the feelings trying to break through. He can't live with that, spending his life watching his parents shatter apart over his pain.

He doesn't tell Chloe that he has no other place to go. She already knows.

***

They leave on a Friday and Sully sees the real world for the first time after it collapsed around him with Henry's lies. It doesn't look different. He thinks he should be disappointed about that. Instead, he doesn't care.

Chloe is driving, silent, the radio turned off. The traffic around them hums, engines running and life moving on. He sees a family passing them by, two children in the back laughing at something. He sees a man, cellphone in his hand, frown on his face. He sees lives so very ordinary and all he can think of is deaths.

He turns the radio on. Henry is all over the news.

***

Chloe's apartment is beautiful. Light colors, big windows, space. A place made for two and he feels Cal's absence the moment he steps into the living room. There's a picture of him and Chloe hanging on the wall, both of them dressed up, Cal's eyes on her. They're smiling. Chloe's dress is red.

Sully turns away.

"You can have the bed," Chloe says, her voice awkward. "You're still all banged up. I'll take the couch."

"Chloe."

"No," she says. "I haven't slept in the bed since getting out of the hospital anyway."

He raises an eyebrow. She looks away.

"Too empty," she finally answers.

He nods, walks into the bedroom, looks at the bed before sitting down. He doesn't ask which side is Cal's.

***

"Are you working again?" he asks her in the evening. 

She shakes her head. "Not yet. Soon." A pause. "I hope."

"How long can you afford this place then?"

She shrugs, not quite unconcerned, not worried either. "For a while. My parents will help if necessary."

"I have some money, too." He almost expects her to decline the offer. Instead, she nods and turns back to the TV. A comedy is on, something ridiculous.

He has seen the movie before. Sully thinks he used to like it. He used to think it's funny.

He's not sure if he still knows how to laugh.

***

They settle into a routine.

She goes to bed early, he goes to bed late. He wakes once every night, her nightmare a sharp sound in the apartment. He runs to her, wakes her with a hand to her shoulder. Watches her wake up, her face a white shape in the darkness. Tells her, "It's alright. You're safe. Henry is dead," and forces his voice to be steady.

"They're all dead," she answers, her voice shaking. He should hug her, touch her. But he never does.

He walks out again.

He never stays.

They eat breakfast together and don't talk about her nightmares. The TV is on; he switches it off when they talk about Harper's Island, rumors and lies and hunger for details. She never comments. He wonders if she minds.

They go outside but ignore the world, the two of them stranded in limbo, alive but not living. It's normal, he thinks, and wonders how long it will last, how long they will stay like this before something, someone breaks. He wonders what will follow after. 

They go to the hospital for check-ups. He hates it there.

Every time the phone rings, he is sure it's the hospital telling them about Cal's death. He watches Chloe when she answers, he never reaches for the phone himself, and he waits for her face to fall. But it doesn't happen. And they keep on waiting.

She misses Cal. He starts to miss him, too.

***

It's been months, Sully realizes, months since Henry broke the world apart. Time is passing and it doesn't heal anything. Outside, spring stretches, the world shakes off its own death and replaces it with birdsongs and a sky that remembers being blue.

Time is passing and the two of them are standing still.

***

The phone rings again, a shrill reminder of the world's existence. 

Cal is awake.

***

Chloe is crying, broken sobs, face red, her whole body shaking. She's crying and Sully hasn't seen her like this before. It scares him. It scares Cal, too.

"I'm sorry," she says between sobs, her voice muffled by Sully's shoulder. "I'm fucking sorry. I can't...stop. I thought I lost you." She breathes deeply, a shudder against Sully's body, and turns to the bed where the ghost lies. Cal. Pale and frail, and Sully can't believe that anyone can look like this and still be alive. "I thought..." She stops there, steps closer to the bed. Takes Cal's hand.

"I thought you would never wake up."

For a moment, that is all there is. A girl crying as she holds on to the boy she loves. And Sully can't do anything but watch. Then there's a nurse, there's a routine, there's the beeping machines and the hospital all around them.

And Sully says, "Glad you woke up."

And Cal smiles.

***

Chloe comes home with him when the nurses throw them out of Cal's room, after she tried to argue her way back in and failed. Chloe comes home again but she's gone. She's with Cal now, her eyes empty, tapping her feet to some fitful rhythm. Sully touches her once, pulls his hand away when she winces, a curse on her lips. Her eyes aren't empty then, they're wide and frightened, and he keeps his distance as he speaks.

"It's alright. You're safe. Henry is dead. Cal woke up."

She nods, a brief smile on her lips. "Cal woke up."

He wants to wake up, too.

***

The hospital becomes home again, Chloe's apartment only a place where they stay at night. The days are filled with white walls and nurses and people stumbling down hallways, trying to find the right rooms, flowers clutched in their hands.

In the evening he tries to cook and Chloe tries to eat. They both fail, the food burned and Chloe losing weight. In the evening, the TV flickers while they're not watching. In the evening, Cal is the empty side of the bed and the smile missing on Chloe's face.

The days are filled with too much coffee and hard chairs, with Sully's body starting to ache all over again, with neon lights making Chloe look pale.

And Cal. Always Cal.

***

"It doesn't make sense," Cal says, jaw set in a stubborn line. "Why did Henry..."

Chloe shakes her head, kisses the knuckles of Cal's hand. "It doesn't matter."

"But..."

"No."

Sully stays silent. There is no answer to the question Cal wants to ask, no reason why his friend took a knife and stabbed Sully, left him behind to die. There's no reason good enough to make it bearable, to think of Henry and accept what he did to all of them. Nothing will ever be enough.

So Sully doesn't ask.

And Chloe doesn't answer.

***

He helps Cal up the stairs, Cal's arm slung around his shoulder, their steps careful. Chloe is behind them, a bag with the few things Cal had with him at the hospital dangling from her hand. They don't speak.

When Chloe opens the door to the apartment, Cal finally breaks the silence, his voice unsteady and yet strong. "Hello, life," he says. "I missed you."

Then he lets go of Sully, enters the apartment. Turns around. "Looks pretty much the same."

Chloe smiles, nods. Throws the bag on the couch and embraces Cal, kisses him softly. Whispers, "Yes", in a voice so small that Sully almost doesn't hear her. When she leads Cal into the bedroom, to the room that had turned into Sully's cave for weeks, he feels suddenly alone.

He closes the door behind him.

***

The TV is on but no one is watching, all of them caught up in something else. Cal and Chloe in each other, curled together on the couch, Chloe careful and Cal tired and still half-broken. And Sully is caught up in them, pretending to focus on the TV screen while all he truly sees is Chloe and Cal.

He wonders if that is how things will be from now on, Cal and Chloe and the way their fingers lock, the soft smiles and fierce relief. And somewhere, Sully.

He gets up. Walks out of the room. Doesn't turn around to see if anyone is watching him leave.

***

"I can find another place to stay," he says in the morning, rubbing his neck. It's stiff, the couch is too small for him, and he slept curled up.

He misses the bed. He misses Henry, too.

Chloe raises an eyebrow. "You don't have to," she answers, and he thinks he can live with that answer. It's open, it allows him to fake a smile and leave. Because she doesn't ask him to stay.

Then,

"I like that you're here."

Chloe smiles. Sully nods.

She hugs him then, holds him close, and he breathes her in, closes his eyes. Feels at home for a few moments, feels almost at peace. When he's opening his eyes again, he sees Cal standing in the door. There's a strange expression on his face, something Sully can't understand, and he steps away from Chloe.

Cal frowns. Sully still doesn't understand.

***

Sometimes, he dreams of Henry. The other Henry. His friend. When he wakes up, he feels the knife again. When he wakes up, he thinks of dying.

They had their final stand, betrayal and defiance, and yet life goes on. It makes no sense. The world is a wounded animal now, dragging itself through the days, tired and empty and stubborn. Sully wonders when it will give up.

He wants it to give up.

***

Cal finds him in a park several weeks after he returned, his steps surer now, his walk steady. He finds him and sits down at Sully's side. The silence between them stretches. They don't try to break it.

Somewhere, somebody is laughing. The sound echoes, it rides on the air. Reminds Sully that somebody is alive. They're alive. He looks over at Cal. Tries out a smile. Cal smiles back.

"Chloe and me used to go here for picnics last summer. It's a nice place for that."

Sully looks around, nods. He can imagine it, sees them laughing, Chloe in a summer dress, Cal in his impossible clothes.

"I think we should do it again this year."

_We,_ Cal tells Sully, tells him as if it shouldn't be just Cal and Chloe this time. It's a crazy thought to have. But summer is coming and they're alive.

***

At night, he hears Chloe cry, he listens to Cal whisper to her, comfort and devotion and promises.

"Everything will be alright," Cal says, and Sully hears it through the open windows, wonders if Cal left theirs open intentionally, if Cal knows that Chloe is not the only one who needs to hear these words. Thinks of Cal in the park, the image of summer and the three of them, a trinity of survivors.

"I promise you," Cal says.

Sully closes his eyes and tries to believe.

***

Chloe gets a new job, her last one lost to her absence.

"It's better this way," she tells them after her first day. "They don't know me from before."

Cal nods, smiles. "As long as you're happy."

It hurts to see her shrug, it hurts to see Cal frown.

"Life goes on. Right?"

Cal reaches out for her then, his fingers dancing over her shoulder. He looks at Sully when he speaks.

"It does."

***

Cal makes breakfast for Chloe before she goes to work, brings Sully coffee after she's gone. Sits with him in the living room, the silence between them becoming comfortable after some days.

But when Cal breaks it, Sully doesn’t mind. It's Cal and he has become used to him. He likes him.

"You're going to get a job here?" 

Sully shrugs at the question, waits for Cal to go on.

"It would make Chloe happy if you stayed, you know. At least for a while." Cal pauses then and Sully almost asks if he's okay with that, if he's jealous. Almost lies to him, tells him that he doesn't want Chloe anymore. But Cal continues. "It would make me happy, too."

It's a surprisingly good thing to hear.

***

Sully wakes the middle of the night because somebody touched him, somebody is there, and he pushes against the dark shape.

"Sully! It's me!" Cal's voice, not Henry's, and Sully remembers.

Henry is dead. He is alive.

_He is alive._

"You were screaming. Nightmare, I'm guessing."

He shrugs at Cal's words, blinks when Cal turns on the small lamp on the table. Sees Chloe standing in the door way, sees her smiling tiredly at him.

"Sorry. Didn't want to wake you."

Chloe shrugs. "Did it often enough to you."

"Yeah, but..."

She shakes her head. "It's okay, really."

She looks at Cal then, her face unreadable to Sully. But Cal seems to understand because he nods, smiles. He reaches out for Sully, his hand warm and sure on his shoulder, anchoring him.

"Come on," Cal says, pulling.

"What?"

"Come one. Move." Another pull and Sully is standing, still confused. Cal smiles again, a hand on Sully's back now, softly pushing him in Chloe's direction. "Bed. Sleep. I'm tired."

"What?" More confusion and Chloe is laughing now, turning and walking back to their bedroom. Sully follows her, Cal's hand guiding him. "Guys?"

"It's better when we're together," Cal says, and Sully thinks of his earlier words, about them being happy that Sully is there. It suddenly feels real.

Chloe is stretched out in the middle of the bed already, the blankets pooling at her ankles, and Cal pushes Sully to one side while he takes the other.

The bed is still warm when he crawls in, the memory of body heat, and when Chloe pulls the blankets over the three of them it feels safe enough to fall asleep again.

So he does.

***

He wakes up to Chloe's hair in his face, pressed up against her body, an arm wrapped around her. Cal is watching him.

"Morning." Cal is smiling now, and Sully nods, moves away from Chloe. Wonders why Cal hasn't punched him for groping his girlfriend, thinks of the night before when Cal pulled him along.

"Morning," he finally answers, his voice dry.

Cal's smile grows wider, a sunrise on his face. He gets up, leans down to kiss Chloe's shoulder, and he's suddenly so very close to Sully. And Sully wants to touch. The urge surprises him, makes his heart stutter and shapes his hands into fists. He breathes out in a gasp, catches the flash of a smirk on Cal's lips.

When Cal moves away again, Sully's eyes ares still on him, and he sees the scar Wakefield left behind for the very first time.

"Shit."

Cal raises an eyebrow in question and Sully nods at his chest. "I... I never saw it before. It looks ..."

"Impressive?" 

"Scary."

Cal laughs, nods. "Yeah. Sometimes, when I see it, I still jump. I'm not used to it." He shrugs then, shrugs it off. "Anyway, I'll make breakfast for us. I'll get you two once I'm done." He grins then, a hand resting against Chloe's feet poking out from under the blanket. "I love Saturdays."

Sully looks at Cal's hand, at fragile skin. "I didn't even realize it's Saturday."

Cal only laughs again.

***

Chloe puts her her feet into Sully's lap while they eat breakfast. Cal doesn't seem to mind.

***

The club is loud and crowded, strobe lights flashing over the dancers, turning them into convulsing bodies. Sully can't stand to watch them, leans against the bar and stares at the drink Cal had put in front of him moments ago.

Chloe is out there on the dance floor.

"You okay?" Cal asks him, his body pressed against Sully's shoulder, his mouth close to Sully's ear. He's very warm. Call presses back. Nods. Shrugs. Cal laughs then, puts his arm around Sully. "If you want to go, just say the word. I think I can drag Chloe from the dance floor. There might be some kicking and screaming though."

Sully winces, thinks of Chloe and Wakefield and Henry and running, running, running.

"Hey," Cal says, his voice soothing now. "Seriously, we don't have to stay."

"Chloe wants to dance."

"Chloe can dance literally everywhere. And she wants you to be happy."

Sully downs his drink then, his body going hot with it, and he turns to Cal. "How can you do that? How can you speak about Chloe as if... as if she wants me. How can you do that and be okay with that? I don't get you, I don't ... I want her, you know that. Shit, Cal..."

Cal looks suddenly serious, his eyes burning into Sully, and it feels as if he's turning him inside out, looking at every part of him. Then, Cal shrugs.

"I looked at Chloe when Wakefield stabbed me. I looked at her and I wanted her to live. I wanted to live. I wanted everything. And when I woke up at the hospital I knew. That life being short is more than a cliche, more than just one random truth. Life is too short and I want everything. And I want Chloe to have it all."

He laughs then, the sound broken by the beat of the music surrounding them.

"And she's not the only one who likes you. It just took me a little longer."

Sully stares at him, thinks about what Cal just said. Tries to make sense out of it and remembers Henry's voice in his ear and a knife in his back. Remembers dying in that forest, alone. 

Thinks that everything might not be enough but just has to be.

***

He kisses Cal first. It's not quite what he expected.

***

They tumble into the bed half-drunk, Sully leaning against Cal, Chloe laughing in the dark. She's naked when she settles between them, her skin hot and soft against his, and he's suddenly nervous again.

Then, she kisses him as if it was easy, and he melts into her touch, tastes Tequila in her mouth. Groans when he feels Cal's hand settle on his hip, strong fingers digging in. Imagines how it would feel if he was in the middle of this, framed by the two of them.

He thinks he might get there one day.

***

Abby comes by days later, a smile on her face, and he pulls her into his arms. She feels familiar now, the body of a survivor pressed against his, her arms strong around his neck.

"Hey," he says, and she smiles wider.

They go to the park together, Chloe walking by his side, holding Cal's hand. She's laughing at something he said, head thrown back, hair flying in the wind.

Children run past them, shouting and alive, their parents exasperated but smiling. It's a scene stolen out of some Disney movie, bright colors and sunshine, and Sully almost expects people to break into song. He laughs at himself then, laughs harder when Abby raises an eyebrow at him. He doesn't explain, just shrugs and smiles.

Summer is there.

***

In the days after he woke up, his mind was a litany of the dead. Now, he's counting the living.

It starts to mean something.

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, no money made. Based on fictional characters.


End file.
